


Insulator

by Arazsya



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: The team are trapped at the station.





	Insulator

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vix_spes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vix_spes/gifts).



It’s probably a sign of what they are now, that it takes until the tube closes down before anyone deigns to come upstairs to come and tell Chandler’s team that it’s snowing. Probably even more of a sign that that person is Buchan, and that he’d only found out because someone had used all of the archive’s teabags, so he’d had to go to the canteen to find more.

They’re avoided, a plague on the district’s arrest figures, and bad luck to anyone who dares to associate with them. No one’s said it, exactly, but it’s always clear enough. Even from Anderson, who makes it clear enough what he thinks - Chandler can read it in every late birthday and Christmas card since the Krays, every email that he never quite manages to follow up on, hear it in his answer machine message. A strategy of avoidance that Chandler, as much as he does fault him for it, does blame him for it, can understand.

He tells himself that he doesn’t need Anderson’s approval, but he’d grown up craving it, always following the path that others had set out for him, waiting and hoping for them to look at him and tell them that he had done well, and it’s a hard habit to break, just like all his others.

It’s Miles who knocks lightly on the door, in the end, when he doesn’t notice the flurry of movement outside his office door.

“Buchan’s just come up from the depths,” he says, poking his head around the door. “It’s snowed.”

“I thought we weren’t due any snow until the weekend?” Chandler climbs to his feet, moves out around the desk, trying to remember the location of the nearest window that he can actually see out of. Somewhere in one of the corridors, he thinks. The incident room’s are too high, and frosted.

Miles shrugs, pushing the door wide for him.

“Been going for a few hours, apparently,” he reports. “It’s quite heavy, too.”

Chandler whisks past him into the incident room, where the others have given up on the paperwork they had been tasked with, in favour of clustering around Buchan, as he relates the tale over the top of his mug of tea, like it’s some great adventure, and he’s the lucky survivor of such horrors as the uniforms’ tinsel and the dropped mash on the canteen floor. Riley and Kent have managed to at least look like they’re paying some attention, but Mansell isn’t even bothering with that. He’s on his phone, and Chandler recognises Twitter’s logo on the screen, from the occasional checks he’s had to do of victims’ social media.

“Bloody trains are down already,” he announces, pulling a disgusted face. “I’d better get going, before the roads-”

“Impassable, apparently,” Buchan informs him, and then returns, mid-sentence, to his story.

Mansell swears again. He drops his phone back into his pocket, and rushes out of the incident room. As he goes, Kent leans back in his chair, so that he can bring his watch into view. Chandler can see him counting, lips moving faintly with the numbers.

He’s back seventeen seconds later for his coat. Riley holds it out for him, without turning her attention away from Buchan, and he plucks it from her hand with a muttered thanks. He starts out again, more slowly this time, half his concentration on rummaging through his pockets for his keys. This time, Chandler and Miles follow him out, just as far as the window.

It shows them exactly what Buchan had told Miles it would – the station’s car park is covered in a thick blanket of white, and there are still flakes falling, heavy clots of them spinning past the window, more a blizzard than anything else. Chandler closes his eyes, thinks of his route home, and identifies six points where it’ll be impossible to travel.

Outside, Mansell appears at the edge of the car park. He makes it a couple of metres out into the snowdrift that had once been a bay, then turns tail and forces his way back into the building.

“Bastards could have told us,” Miles mutters.

“What?” Chandler shoots a glance at him, and he tips his head to indicate the car park. Chandler follows the gesture, and realises that, for the most part, it’s a smooth, unbroken expanse of white – most of the cars are gone. He can pick out all of their vehicles, and that accounts for most of the ones remaining.

“Judy get the kids home OK?” Chandler asks. Another glut of flakes blusters past the window, sticking against the glass. He can make out the jagged lines of the ice crystals, for just a moment before it falls on down, leaving a wet smear.

“Yeah.” Miles stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets, and stares belligerently out into the cold. “She said she was going to call me, but it was all a bit of a rush, getting them back before the roads closed. I told her I’d rather be stuck here than them at school.”

_Stuck here_ , Chandler thinks, and tries to counter his dismay with by reminding himself that he never leaves on time anyway. It’ll be like any other day, except that the others will be there. And maybe by the time that end of shift rolls around, someone will have had a go at dealing with the roads, and they’ll all be able to go home. If not, it won’t be the first all-nighter he’s pulled. Not even the first without a case.

When they get back to the incident room, Mansell’s already back there, sitting on his desk, one shoe off, brandishing it like it’s an insult to the force, as it drips.

“Put that down before you flood the place,” Miles orders, and Riley plucks it from his hand, depositing it into one of his lower desk drawers. There’s nothing important in there, Chandler hopes, and supposes that Mansell’s desk drawers aren’t somewhere that he would ever want anything important to be.

“You didn’t have to bring back half the blizzard for us to believe you,” she tells him, teasing.

“You could always walk home,” Kent suggests, the tail end of a discussion that Chandler hasn’t heard. Mansell snorts, and leans down to pick his other shoe off the floor, dropping it with a soggy thump into the same drawer.

“I’d have webbed feet before I got there,” he says. “Or no feet.”

“You’ll probably develop frostbite before you become semi-aquatic,” Buchan says, and Mansell rolls his eyes.

Chandler picks his way carefully around them, keeping for enough from their conversation that he won’t be drawn into it, like skirting the edge of a whirlpool. Closes the door of his office behind him, and settles back into place at his desk.

He doesn’t watch them, but he’s aware of them, through his glass walls. It stays quiet, as quiet as it ever is in the incident room, until the end of the shift, and then there’s a flurry of movement, as they all rush to check their phones, trying to determine whether or not the traffic situation has improved.

Miles meets his eyes, and shakes his head.

Chandler nods, and his attention drifts back down. It’s caught again, later, by the swing of the incident room’s doors, as Buchan finds his way back up again. None of the others actually seem to be doing anything by then – Kent’s sitting at his desk with a few files in front of him, and is actively holding a pen, but the hand is mostly gesturing, as he talks with the others. Riley only seems to be half listening, typing into her phone. Mansell has pulled his chair around like a child rearranging for circle time. His odd socks are on full display, but at least they’re intact. His shoes have migrated to one of the radiators to dry.

Buchan takes up a position leaning against the edge of Riley’s desk. He raises a finger to interrupt something Kent’s saying, and Kent nods along in agreement. Miles interjects over the top of his mug, and Buchan turns his entire body to refute him. From where he’s sitting, Chandler can see the faintest trace of a smirk on Miles’ face. He’s probably riling him up on purpose.

Miles must feel Chandler’s eyes on him, because he looks around, and Chandler doesn’t dip his head back to his paperwork fast enough. He stands up, and manages to extract himself from the team without any of them noticing. He doesn’t knock this time, just opens the door and leans around it.

“You not coming to join us, boss?” he asks. “Buchan decided we didn’t have enough to do, brought us up some historical murder to look at.”

“I have enough present crime to deal with,” Chandler says. Signs off the form he was filling out with a flourish, and folds the top of the file down.

“Shift ended half an hour ago,” Miles informs him. “And it’s not every day you get an opportunity like this.”

“An opportunity?” Chandler glares up at him, feels his words starting to heat. “An opportunity to, what did you call it? _Have a wobble_ over Mansell dripping everywere?”

“He dried out hours ago,” Miles says. “And if anyone’s going to have a wobble over Mansell doing anything, it’s Kent. You’ve seen worse than that on his desk.”

That’s true enough, Chandler supposes, but an assurance that the incident room isn’t openly hostile isn’t enough to make him want to leave his office, not when there’s something that he can be doing.

“I doubt they’re interested in hearing my perspective.” Chandler gestures towards where the others are still talking – Riley has moved to snatch a file out of Buchan’s hands, and is pointing at something in it, holding it up for the others to see. Mansell’s laughing. He’ll put a damper on that, he knows.

“I’ll be moving them off murders in a minute,” Miles says. “It’s downtime.”

“Then they definitely aren’t going to want my perspective.” Chandler turns his attention back to his desk as pointedly as possible, and, though he can feel Miles waiting for him to look up again, he doesn’t.

Miles closes the door behind him with a quiet click, leaving Chandler with a muffled impression of their amusement in the other room. He doesn’t begrudge them it. It’s not their fault they’ve been stuck there, and, so long as nothing comes in, it is after shift.

There’s a faint knocking, half an hour later. It’s Kent, this time, and Chandler nods for him to come in, but he doesn’t make it much further than the threshold.

“Still snowing, sir,” he reports. “Mansell says they reckon it’ll carry on through the night. We’re just going to paly some cards, and skip thought you might like a game?”

“Not now,” Chandler says. He manages a faint smile, trying to take any sting out of his words. “But thank you. Maybe later.”

Kent nods and smiles back, retreats without turning his back until he’s completely left the office, as though Chandler’s royalty. He shakes his head at the others, and Mansell starts to deal.

Chandler goes back to the office stationary form, and decides not to interrupt them to check on their staple supplies. They should be responsible for their own staples. Most of them are, as far as he’s aware, but Mansell’s never filled out one of the forms in his life, and probably steals them from Kent or Riley. Buchan, meanwhile, goes through more stationary than anyone else that Chandler has ever encountered.

He doesn’t watch them, but he can hear them now, as their voices rise with accusations of cheating, and the crowing as someone wins a hand. Miles mock-threatening Mansell with traffic if he follows through on _fifty-two card pickup_.

Riley’s next to knock, when the conversation lulls again.

“Apparently there’s still a shop open,” she says, waving her phone at him as though he’s supposed to be able to read anything on it from there. “There’s some food in the canteen, but I’d rather have something else. Do you want anything? I’ve got a few orders, and I was going to make Mansell come with me to carry everything, but he’s insisting that he can’t.”

“No, thank you.” Chandler glances at Riley’s shoes, trying to work out whether or not they’re waterproof. He supposes they have a better chance than his own shoes. “There might be some spare boots downstairs that he can use.”

“Right,” Riley says, grinning at him. “Thanks.” She closes the door behind her, and tows Mansell with her out of the incident room, ignoring his hands, waving in protest.

Buchan’s next – he brings a cup of tea, which Chandler can tell from the taste was almost certainly made by Kent, but he’s deep in conversation with Miles, and shuffling the playing cards, although no one seems to be waiting to play again.

“Thanks,” Chandler says, standing to intercept it, before Buchan can choose somewhere to put it down. “Not trying to get home, Ed?”

“No, it looks like it’s rather futile out there,” Buchan says. “I’ve phoned my mother – some of the people from the WI walked her home when it was still quite light. I thought I might catch up on some filing, but the others have their own ideas.”

“Oh?” Chandler moves back towards his seat. Outside, Miles’ conversation with Kent has finished, and Kent is leaning over his paperwork again. Everything’s probably on hold until Riley and Mansell get back.

“Miles suggested that we watch one of the bootleg films from the evidence locker,” Buchan says. “He didn’t think you’d be very keen on it, though. Meg said she’d see if she could find a board game or something at the shop. We _would_ be carrying on with cards, but DC Mansell cheats.”

“Enjoy yourselves,” Chandler says.

“You should join us,” Buchan announces, and Chandler has to bite at his tongue before he can ask whether Miles had put him up to it, if he’s planning on sending every member of the team in to try and get him to come out, and if so, to tell him not to bother.

“Maybe some other time,” Chandler says, and, to his credit, Buchan leaves without asking what other time he could possibly join them.

Mansell’s next, just a brief poke of his head around the door, to ask about Chandler’s pronunciation of _scone_ , before he ducks back into the debate behind him to relay the answer to the others, who are hunched over a Scrabble board.

Miles is standing before Mansell has even sat back down. Chandler leans back in his chair to wait for him, struggling to relax his jaw. He’s just trying to help, in his own way. He pulls the door open, and lets it swing closed behind him.

“Buchan’s winning,” he announces, distastefully. “You know, you could clean up in there. Get something fancy on the double word score. You’ll win whatever it is they’re betting.”

“They’re _betting_?”

“Not money,” Miles says. “I think Riley’s stake was the worst drawing her kids do next week. Kent’s raised her whatever Erica can manage on a napkin next time she’s drunk, so might be some proper art involved.”

He offers a smile, at that. Chandler can’t return it.

“Miles,” he says, his tone serious enough that Miles’ face drops. “Can you please stop sending them in here?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Miles says, and there’s no sign of a lie in his face. “I haven’t told anyone to do anything.”

“Kent said you told him to come in here,” Chandler counters. He decides not to go for the easy route, the one where he reminds Miles that it’s his _job_ to tell people to do things.

“Then Kent was lying,” Miles tells him, and there’s a twitch to his eyebrows now, but it seems more amusement than anything else. “Not that I wouldn’t have told him to, but he probably just wants to be less obvious.”

“Miles, they’ve been coming in here, one by one, do you really expect me to believe that they’re doing it of their own accord?”

“Play the CCTV back, if you want,” Miles challenges. He pulls out one of the chairs on the other side of Chandler’s desk, and sits. “All you’ll get from me is insults and conversation about Liam’s piano lessons. If they came in to talk to you, it’s because they wanted you to. If they asked you to come out, it’s because they want to spend time with you. They know you’re a part of this… team. Even if you don’t.”

Chandler knows what fits into Miles’ hesitation. He sighs, heavily, glances down into the mug that Buchan had brought him, at the dregs of tea. Back out, at his team, who aren’t watching the meeting, but he can see a studied stillness in them that tells him they’re all aware of it. At Miles, waiting for him to understand, a stubborn cast to his face.

“I don’t know why you’d think I could beat Buchan at Scrabble,” he says.

“You read poetry and all that, don’t you?” Miles says. “Literature.”

“He’s a historian,” Chandler points out, tracing a line along the edge of his desk with one finger, the wood smooth to the touch. “He reads academic texts.”

“It’ll be an interesting match then, won’t it?” Miles clearly isn’t going to give in. He leans forwards, stares him down. “If you don’t come out now, there’ll be no time left in the shallow end. Buchan wants us all to try ghost stories later. I said it was the wrong time of year, Kent says they’re seasonal, Buchan says he’s right, and Mansell likes lighting the torch up under his face, so I’m outvoted.”

“Fine.” Chandler stands from his chair, lifting his jacket from the back of it. “But I’m not joining in in the middle of a game.”

“You’ll win the next one, then,” Miles says. He gets up, too, holds the door open for him, so that he can’t back out of it. Chandler considers glaring at him, but decides against it, and instead strides through like he has all the confidence in the world.

The others look up at his approach, and for one awful moment, he thinks they might applaud, or something, like a group of cruel children, but instead, Kent and Riley both stand, dragging at their chairs in an attempt to make enough room for one for Chandler.

Miles overtakes him easily, snatches the dictionary from under Mansell’s elbow, and offers it to him. Chandler takes it, feels the stitching of the binding beneath his fingers, and folds it open, to check for the word that Buchan is counting out onto the board.

He doesn’t look back towards his office once.


End file.
